I'd love to start talking more about making a living as an independent hacker/creator but I've sometimes felt a vibe that this topic isn't so welcome on the Fediverse.
Any thoughts on the best way to approach this?
My goal would be to share what I've learned to help others do the same!
Not gonna mark these as hashtags, because I don't want this to show up in searches, but:
The book uses # ryoms
There's # kickstarter
I'll flag # sysadmin because this book is relevant to them, but muting either of the first two blocks the topic.
Be easy to ignore and filter. Connect sincerely. Just like any other small indie creator.
just realized i've had the mollywhite.net domain for over 10 years(!!)
related sneak peek into an upcoming piece: i firmly believe that if you're going to spend money on one thing online it should be a domain, particularly as online identity gets more fragmented. as platforms come and go, you can always find me there.
The thing that was on my mind as this was going on:
"I need to not kill this man."
I saw how he stood. I understood his stance. If he had grabbed me, he'd be on the ground. If he'd thrown a punch, I would have steered him into an asphalt faceplant. The parking lot had cameras, the cops would have called it evolution in action.
But I, personally, needed to not kill the man.
What good is twenty-four years of martial arts practice if it teaches you to really need to NOT kill someone?
20 years ago, sure. Nowadays? Oh god fuck no, you’ll spend all day every day dealing with attacks and security issues.
People who don’t know better will be in a world of pain they cannot imagine and anyone who does know better and still subscribes to this technolibertarian bullshit deserves all the pain they get.
Unless you absolutely have to, (and if you even ask if you need to, the answer is, again, FUCK NO), do. not. run. your. own. email. server.
The git zine might have set a record for number of beta readers who helped out with it: we had 66 amazing people read drafts of the zine, ask questions, tell me what’s confusing, and what they learned!
The beta reader process helps us SO much to keep the things that are working and fix the parts that aren’t.
Not just for technical things either! For years, a note on my wall said "Do not write so you can be understood; write so you cannot be misunderstood." Early readers illuminate how many ways I fail... which yeah, kind of sucks, but it's so much better to find those things BEFORE publishing!
When I left Twitter, I worried that it would impact my ability to make a living.
That worry was unfounded.
Would I be doing better if I was still on Twitter? Perhaps. But looking at my #ryoms visitors on Kickstarter, it's clear that the fedi is a more than adequate replacement.
My GPG key expired at 10:10 UTC today, 12 hours after finding out @mwl had all remaining copies of his PGP & GPG book destroyed. If there is a god of encryption, I invoked and angered it yesterday.